Web applications are applications provided to users over a network, typically the internet. A web application is typically designed to be executed by a web browser. For example, as known in the art, a web application can be downloaded as part of a web page and executed by a web browser using a plug-in application.
Adobe Flex is a technology for building web applications and is well known in the art. Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR runtimes are used to execute Adobe Flex applications (referred to herein as “Flex applications”). A shockwave player is a computer program or application used for executing or running Flex applications. Adobe Shockwave plug-in (also known as a shockwave player in the art) is used to execute Flex applications included or embedded in web pages. Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is readable for both humans and computers. MXML is an XML based user interface markup language used by programmers to develop Flex applications.
A Flex application is typically written using the ActionScript scripting language known in the art. Generally, the ActionScript scripting language is a dialect of JavaScript and is based on the MXML coding standards. An ActionScript code, program or script is compiled into a “ShockWave Flash” or “small web format” (SWF) file format that can be executed by a shockwave player, e.g., shockwave plug-in or a flex player as known in the art.
Adobe Flash (or Adobe Flash Platform) is a software platform useable for authoring a software cross-platform application that is executed by the known in the art Adobe Flash Player. For example, multimedia content in web pages is often presented using Adobe Flash Player. For example, Adobe Flash is frequently used to add streamed video and interactive multimedia content to web pages.
Adobe Flex (or Apache Flex), is a software development kit (SDK) used for developing and deploying cross-platform applications that are executed based on the Adobe Flash platform. Additional information related to Adobe Flex may be found, for example, at “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flex”.
The .NET framework is a software framework that enables programmers using various development tools and coding languages to produce applications that can interoperate based on the .NET framework. Additional information related to the .NET framework may be found, for example, at “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework”.
A web application included in a web page and executed by a plug-in can communicate with an application external to the web browser (referred to herein as “external applications”) using Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). However, simple, easy to implement interoperability of web applications with external applications is currently limited to predefined external functions in the Flex Application that implement a simple external interface with HTML and .NET, if any.